Governor suggests limits on number of hotels and bringing illegal accommodation into system

On July 14th 2010, at the meeting room of Phuket Provincial Hall, Wichai Praisa-ngob, the Governor of Phuket, presided over a meeting of ‘Private–Government Joint Committee to Solve Economic Problems in Phuket’. The committee members consisted of representatives from government organizations and private sectors.

The main agenda of the meeting was to discuss about controlling the number of hotels and promoting home-stays. The main reason that the number of hotels in Phuket should be controlled was that there were already too many hotels in the island. As a result, visitors spread out to stay in different hotels and now each hotel does not have many guests. Therefore, the control would help to balance the number of hotels and guests. Moreover, related sectors should support more the local home-stays in order to bring more income into local communities.

However, it was impossible to prohibit hotel investment because it was against the law. So, the only way to keep balance between accommodation and guest numbers were proper home-stays promotion and not let illegal hotels or homes/villas/condos into the system. Consequently, the committee planned to ask for permission from the Ministry of Interior in order to make homes/villas/condos legal accommodation.

After getting the permission, the hotels, home-stays/villas/condos had to run under the government’s conditions which would be set up by a special committee later.

Governor admitted it will be difficult to control. More than 50% of all hotels (& homes/villas/condos) are currently unlicensed.